Alan Wake AU Review

Lighting up has never been so good for you. A unique take on the survival horror game.

In the survival horror genre the darkness is almost a character unto itself. In these games evil lurks in the inky black, and trying to peer into it, often with something weedy like a torch, helps to build and maintain atmosphere, and to set the player up for scares. Survival horror games feed off the fear of the unknown.

In the survival horror-style sections of Half-Life 2: Episode One, for instance, Valve cleverly made a flashlight the player's greatest strength and most marked weakness. In the most memorable of those areas, the player's only source of light was the torch, and taking on the enemies that shambled in from all sides required wheeling on the spot, trying to pierce the darkness and get a bead on them. Using the flashlight for too long at a stretch would wear the batteries down, however, dropping the player into pitch blackness. It was a delicate balance - finding the right times to endure the darkness to charge your source of light.

In Alan Wake, the torch is once again a precious resource, but instead of being a device that temporarily pushes back the darkness, it has morphed into a powerful weapon against the darkness. Simply put, Alan's flashlight is the most powerful weapon in Alan Wake. The game's wraith-like enemies are infested with darkness, so in order to damage them, the player must first blast the darkness away with an extended dose of light from the torch. It's a great system, allowing the player to set 'em up with the torch then knock 'em down with a traditional firearm, and definitely helps give Alan Wake's gameplay its own feel.

I can see the light... IT BURNS!

The use of light in the game doesn't stop there of course. Street lights represent safe havens where Alan's health will recharge faster, while a number of areas have work-lights that can be activated and used to weaken enemies. Better still, flares become a powerful tool in Alan Wake. Enemies often swirl into existence all around Alan, so lighting up a flare gives the player enough breathing room to launch a counter-attack. And then there's the flare gun, which is a thing of beauty, and basically functions as the game's rocket launcher. Each time it's fired the game follows the path of the flare in slow motion before it explodes and takes out any enemies in the vicinity.

The combination of flashlight/flares and more traditional weapons like handguns, rifles and shotguns is a good one, but it does make the game less scary than it could be. Simply put, you're almost always equipped to handle any situation the game throws at you. Even when an enemy bursts out at Alan, you won't freak, just get your flashlight beam on him – or spark a flare - and start backing away. In fact, the biggest challenge a lot of the time is trying to avoid getting Alan stuck on stuff as you back up, trying to miraculously dodge weapons that are thrown at you from behind, and dealing with Alan's incredible lack of fitness – this dude can't run for more than a few seconds without getting puffed. Obviously this makes sense from a gameplay perspective but it can be a little frustrating.

The game tries to balance the fact that you feel confident in taking on almost any situation by stripping Alan of his gear regularly, but it doesn't really make the most of these opportunities and they wind up being more annoying than anything else, particularly if you've been conserving your best weapons… and then they're taken. For the fifth time. The team at Remedy really should have ramped up the scares and challenge to compensate for the security that the flashlight brings.